


The Puppy-Fly Effect

by Rockinlibrarian



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Dogs, First Meetings, Gen, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28575507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rockinlibrarian/pseuds/Rockinlibrarian
Summary: It's 1980, Hill Valley, CA, and Dr. Emmett Brown has already seen the future. But that doesn't mean the details can't still take him by surprise.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	The Puppy-Fly Effect

The most confounding part was that he already knew he would make it work. He’d _seen_ it work. But that didn’t make him any less stuck now. Sure, the ideal framing vehicle wouldn’t even exist for a few more years (as he’d also, already, seen), but why shouldn’t the basic Flux Capacitor come together properly after all the time he’d put into the schematics?

And the puppy wanted attention.

When he’d finally had to put steady old Copernicus down—round about the time the Apollo missions started up, appropriately enough— it had still been years before he had the heart to adopt another dog (though he knew he would— he’d seen that, too) making it even longer since he’d experienced puppy-hood. There was nothing _steady_ about puppies.

He'd chosen the backyard for welding with the idea that the puppy would have more room for running and wouldn’t feel the need to be right underfoot causing blowtorch accidents. But of all the backyard, right around the workbench was the only place the puppy wanted to be.

It had figured out that chewing on the gas line made its master yell a lot and swat at it, but not stop what he was doing to come play. Attempting to lick the flame made its master gasp and turn away—besides, it was too spicy. Finally the puppy decided Dr. Brown needed to get away from the workbench entirely.

It scooped a set of calipers into its mouth and dashed straight toward a low gap in the fence, squeezing purposefully through. Dr. Brown peevishly shut off the torch. “EINIE!”

“Whoa there. Hey!” A child’s voice, then giggling, mixed with the sound of metal wheels skidding to a stop on the sidewalk and the tags on the puppy’s collar shaking on the other side of the fence.

Dr. Brown opened the gate and called, “Get back here, Einie, leave the boy alone!”

The kid, a vaguely familiar-looking boy of eleven or twelve, seemed unperturbed, though, as he wrestled the squirming puppy with one hand and a skateboard with the other. “Is this your dog, Mister?”

“Yes, yes, I apologize for his exuberance. C’mere, you mongrel.” The puppy hopped back and forth between its master and the boy, playing keep-away with the calipers.

“What’s his name? Did you say ‘Heinie’?” The boy snickered slightly.

“Einstein. Though he has yet to prove himself worthy of the moniker.” He finally extracted the calipers from the mouth of the dog, who yipped cheerfully as if to congratulate him, then padded back through the gate.

“Has he been wrecking your stuff? Whatcha building in there, anyway?” The boy peered past him into the yard.

Dr. Brown straightened up and stretched furtively to fill as much of the gateway as possible. “Oh, just…improving some technology to be incorporated into-- a new kind of…transportation—”

The boy was watching him, thoughtfully and a bit, he thought, suspiciously. But before he could come up with a more plausible excuse, the kid said, “I think we can help each other out. You need to do your work without Einstein interrupting you. I need to save up for a 24-fret Charvel Superstrat with locking tremolo and humbucker pickup but I’ll settle for a Gibson Sonex 180 if I have to. So let’s make a deal.”

He was amused by the technical specifics. “So you’re an audiophile?”

The boy frowned. “What? No, really, I swear you can trust me.”

“No, never mind, I understand your proposal. You keep Einstein entertained and out of my hair on a regular basis, and I’ll pay you two dollars an hour; AND, once you get that tired old Gibson, I’ll show you how to rewire the circuitry to maximize the wattage so it plays like a Superstrat.”

The boy’s eyes lit up. “You can do that?”

“Course. Simple electronics. YOU can do that. What’s your name, kid?”

“Marty McFly.” He stuck out a hand.

Doctor Brown paused. Recalibrated. Looked the boy in the eye and finally shook the hand, saying, carefully, “Doctor Emmett Brown. You can call me Doc. Well then… Marty—” strange how the name felt to say after all these decades “—what if we start at 10 AM tomorrow? I think I want to give Einstein my own full attention today after all.”

The kid—that naive, incognizant kid he had to pretend now that he’d only just met— dropped his skateboard back onto its wheels and hopped on, then waved goodbye with a half-salute. Doctor Brown nodded, backed in through the gate, and collapsed onto the back stoop.

The puppy shuffled over, and he scooped it into his lap, giving it a brisk tousle behind the ears. “Oh, Einie, you rascal. Don’t you know that simple act of pilferage has singlehandedly cemented the course of my own personal history in the most significant way?” The puppy licked his face. Doc rubbed its ears and pondered the power that furry little details had over the entire grand unfolding of time. How intricate! How terrifying!

Of course, that in no way scared him off his project.


End file.
